T-Mobile Hikes Text Price To 20 Cents Each
T-Mobile USA has raised the price of sending text messages from $0.15 to $0.20, the last of the country’s four big carriers to do so. The 33 percent price hike will go into effect on August 29 for those customers without a text bundle, or for those who exceed their bundle limit.
Just three years ago, sending a text via the four major carriers cost $0.10 each. In 2006, they upped it to $0.15. In October last year, Sprint (NYSE: S) began charging $0.20, with Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T (NYSE: T) quickly following.
CrunchGear did a bit of math and worked out that at $0.20 each, a text message with its 160 bytes of data max is the equivalent of paying $1310.72 for 1 MB of data, if the carriers charged for data downloads at the same rate they charged for text messaging.
So, will the price increase—a change in the terms and service agreement—mean that disgruntled customers will be able to get out of paying an early termination fee if they choose to walk away from T-Mobile? Not exactly. “Depends on the customer’s usage and terms of the customer’s agreement with us,” a T-Mob representative said to RCR.
Comments (0)